


Time for me will be no more

by 17 pansies (17pansies)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Phil Coulson, Flashbacks, M/M, Prompt Fill, Sad puppy Clint, So very many flashbacks, avengers reverse big bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17pansies/pseuds/17%20pansies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the marching band that Clint remembered most clearly. </p>
            </blockquote>





	Time for me will be no more

Written for [this lovely art](http://archiveofourown.org/works/959364) from Sian as part of the Avengers Reverse Big Bang 2013.

 

  
_The first time Clint ever saw a marching band, he was nine years old and hiding behind Barney, holding a grimy scrap of cloth to his nose to try and stem the bleeding.  The three boys who had decided the brothers would be good sport were long gone, scared away by the arrival of the crowds and the prancing saddle horses which preceded the music.  Barney rubbed his stomach where more than one sneakered foot had connected and tugged Clint forward so he could see better._

_The band was loud – although his ears were still ringing from the punch he’d taken to the side of his head – but Clint was amazed by the brilliant white pants and shoes that the musicians wore.  The feet stomped along in unison, knees going up and down with (almost) perfect synchronicity and he stared at the shiny faced people blowing into their shiny gold instruments and wanted, just for one, brief moment, to be one of them, marching along with everyone else, belonging, together, not alone._

_Then Barney spotted the lumbering circus wagons following behind the band, drawn by elephants and giant horses and a whole team of zebras, and Clint’s life changed all over again._

 

“Do you have eyes on the target, Barton?”

“Yes sir.”  Clint blinked, the scene below him coming back into focus.  Five storeys down, another small town marching band strutted proudly along the main street, trumpets polished and crisp white pants almost blindingly bright in the sunshine.  And outside the mom and pop coffee shop near the police station sat his mark for the day, nursing an espresso.  Clint’s arrow was half the thickness of a standard shaft, tipped with a minute needle.  It would barely have to brush the skin of the swarthy Italian to do its job and then the whole thing was engineered to shatter into a thousand pieces on contact with the ground.   After which, they could get the hell out of Dodge because they’d been tailing this asshole for days now.

Trust him to surface in the busiest little town this side of the Mississippi.

“Barton, on my mark,” Coulson’s voice said in Clint’s ear, and Clint lifted his bow.

No one seemed to notice when the target slumped across the small, metal table, and Clint packed up his bow, slipping it into the compact gym bag he had open on the roof beside him.  Wrist and finger guards were stuffed in a side pocket and before the band had made it down to the main crossroads he was exiting the building by the rear doors and strolling calmly over towards the black suited figure that was leaning casually on the side of an Acura.

“Well, that’s another one down,” he said, his tone conversational, as he opened the rear door and threw his bag onto the seat.  “A few more teenagers will make it to adulthood now.”

Coulson glanced at him, and Clint shrugged.  He didn’t feel like being the class clown today.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“What?  It’s the tip of the iceberg, Coulson.  We cut off one head and another three grow right back to take its place.”  He slammed the door.  “Honestly, sometimes I wonder what kind of moral crusader SHIELD thinks it is.  Proper bad guys, that’s what we’re supposed to deal with.  International espionage, political catastrophes, random acts of terrorism, that’s why we’re here.  Not to bump off some mid-level mafiosa.”

“Who was selling badly cut drugs to high school kids and cultivating the drop outs for the upstate brothel he runs,” Coulson added.

“We can’t save everyone.”  Clint looked away, back up the street to where he could just see the parade through a gap in the buildings.  “As much as we try.”

Coulson laid a warm, heavy hand on Clint’s shoulder with a sigh.

“I know,” he said.  “But isn’t it worth trying, just for those we do save?”

A few months later and their remit changed.  Clint mentally added ‘superheroes’ to his list of things that SHIELD was supposed to deal with.  Watching a big blond guy try to swing a magic hammer warped his view of the real world, but Clint was used to that.  Every time he thought he got a perspective on life, something came along and shook it up.

 

 

_Life at the circus wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t particularly good either, but considering where Clint had been in his life up to then, it was a decent enough place to stay for a while.  He got fed regularly, which was always a plus point, and whilst he wasn’t the biggest of the boys his age, he was fast and agile.  He spent his time between the acrobats and the horse wranglers, learning to stay out of the way of the ringmaster, a bull-necked brute of a man who could turn on the charm for the public and lash out with his whip when the gates were closed._

_“He’s a bad tempered fucker,” Barney muttered, climbing up into the bunk above Clint one night.  “Sadistic asshole.”_

_Clint nodded sagely, immune to Barney’s language now.  The older boys tolerated Barney, let him run errands for them, steal stuff and he’d learned to smoke and drink and swear to fit in with them._

_“Did he get you then?”_

_“Just a clip.”  The bunk creaked as Barney settled into it.  “Got Joey worse, right across his ass.  He ain’t gonna be able to sit down for a week.”_

_“What were you doing, when he got you?”_

_“Nothing you need to worry about.”  The sound of Barney punching his pillow indicated that the conversation was over.  Clint didn’t like it when Barney kept secrets from him, but gang business wasn’t for the little kids.  “But we can head into town when we stop next and get us some new stuff.”_

_Thieving then, Clint decided, pulling the thin blanket up over his shoulders.  He didn’t like that either, but it was necessary for their survival.  Barney only ever took what they needed, he said so himself.  And those bigger boys were teaching his brother how to be independent - proper life skills._

_Clint closed his eyes, telling himself that everything would be fine once they were old enough to look after themselves._

 

 

 

Then Loki happened.  One moment Clint was kicking his heels in the depths of a SHIELD bunker, watching over some bat-shit Scandinavian who made Tony Stark look sane, the next he was unmade, every thought and dream and feeling he’d ever had laid bare to Loki.

“And you know, don’t you Barton, that even though you think that you want it all, you actually want very little.”  Loki’s voice was a soothing, sibilant hiss in his ear, in his mind, that he wanted to run from because it wasn’t the voice he wanted to hear.  “But he isn’t here, and you don’t _need_ him.  I am all you need, I will watch over you and then this puny, pathetic world full of so much misery and hate will be mine to set free.”

The touch of Loki’s spear didn’t erase Clint’s free-will.  Instead, it was buried, screaming in anguish beneath the layers of subjugated obedience and ruthlessness that Loki craved.  The only sign it was still there was the fact Clint actually missed when shooting at Hill and Fury.  He watched as Loki subverted others to his cause, leaving them broken and defeated yet unknowing, thinking themselves serving a greater good.  As Clint did, robbed of his freedom in exchange for a slavery he considered a kindness.

It was the day after the battle of New York when Clint found out about Coulson’s death.

“I couldn’t tell you yesterday,” Tasha said.  She looked small and vulnerable, weary beyond measure, curled up in an armchair in their safe house (for house, read tiny apartment) off Avenue D.  The bruising across her face was blooming into a riot of purple and blue and red.  “With everything – the Chitauri, the nuke…”  She tailed off, lost for words, something that frightened Clint more than any alien infestation.  “I’m sorry, Clint.”

A hundred missed opportunities flickered through Clint’s mind as he stared at the threadbare carpet.  Quiet moments in the car with Coulson, conversations that one or the other of them steered onto different, safer tracks.  The heavy weight of Coulson’s hand on Clint’s bare arm, warm calloused fingers pressed to smooth skin, a silent benediction of a job well done.

 

_Someone got injured every day in the circus.  It was never going to qualify for any work safety initiative.  Cuts and bruises were common, the odd broken bone from trips and falls and incidents with the animals.  Clint lost count of the bruises he got learning to draw his bow.  His forearm was black from the crook of his elbow to his wrist most of the time, the fingers of his left hand sore and raw, even with the crude leather finger grips.  Tomas eventually took pity on him and gave Clint one of his old wrist guards._

_Then there were the injuries sustained in other parts of the circus.  Drunken hauliers wanting a piece of Clint’s young, blond innocence left their mark on him and Barney, including a great deal of blood that belonged to neither brother.  Clint never forgot the first time he felt his knife slip between a man’s ribs._

_Other people died too – old Ma Collins broke her neck whilst staggering around drunk late one night; a zebra handler was crushed to death by his own animals; someone put a match to the underside of the ringmaster’s caravan.  Death was just one of those things that happened, and when you were barely a teenager, it always felt like it was something that wouldn’t actually happen to you._

_Then Barney died with a knife in his back and rain on his face and the world suddenly seemed a much colder place._

“There’s a circus in Central Park.”

Clint glanced up from his newspaper and scowled.  Tony was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the 55” widescreen TV on the far wall.

“The whole of New York is a circus right now,” Clint replied, going back to the international pages. He sat in the corner on a pile of cushions, where he couldn’t see the cleanup still going on outside the window, and he couldn’t see the TV, and if he stayed quiet, most people coming into the huge living room couldn’t actually see him either, which was fine on oh-so-many levels.

“No, no, a real circus.  With tents and elephants and clowns and have you no desire to go relive your youth, Barton?”

“Do you?” Clint asked pointedly, and Tony grinned at him, all shark-sharp teeth and eyes that saw too much.

“Only in as much as it’s a unique indulgence that those of us who had no youth can indulge in.”

Clint snorted and shook the paper out.

“Not in the mood, Tony.”

“Oh come on, Eragon.  Surely you must have had the urge to go swing from the trapeze or dance on the high wire or whatever it is that you used to do.”

Clean out the horse trailer and coil ropes, Clint thought, and the image was so sharp and clear he could almost smell the dung and the straw, and feel the dusty, musty weight of the rope in his hands.  He blinked down at the paper which sprang back into focus.

“Been there, done that.”  Clint deliberately turned the page, not looking up.  “I’m sure we could always find you a nice cave if you’re wanting to relive the past.”

The silence was deafening.

Steve tracked him down the roof the following day.

“Been looking for you,” Steve said.  He stretched, breathing deep and looking around.  “Mighty fine view from up here, isn’t it?”

“It’s not bad,” Clint allowed.  And it wasn’t bad, the whole of New York spread out in the noon sun.  As long as you were able to ignore the last pieces of the giant alien whales which were systematically being dismantled and hauled away by a flock of Chinooks.  “I guess this has something to do with the quinjet that’s on the H-pad right now.”

“Fury wants us.”  Steve scratched the back of his neck with a shrug.  “Some meeting or other on the helicarrier.”

“And that bodes well for everyone.”  Clint stood, brushing non-existent dust from his combat trousers.  He’d not been back up there since… well, since.   According to Tasha it was pretty much fixed, even the bits the Other Guy had rearranged, but Clint wasn’t looking forward to revisiting the place.  Even if it had been over three months.  “I take it you’re the first wave, shortly to be followed by Tasha if I baulk.”

“Something like that,” Steve said with a wry smile.

“Lead on Captain.”

 

 

_The first time Clint picked up a bow, it felt awkward.  He’d like to say it was a natural thing, that he dropped a quiverful in the bull’s eye after a couple of warm up shots, but that would be a lie.  He was awful.  Tomas kept showing him, over and over again how to nock, draw, release, but it just wouldn’t work.  He desperately wanted to be able to put an arrow in the tatty cloth target pinned to a couple of bales but it seemed it wasn’t to be._

_“I no understand,” Tomas stamped his foot in irritation.  “You be so good with that stupid little air gun.  And you cannot hit a target the size of a small car!”_

_“Put it in his other hand,” Elise called from above their heads.  Tomas looked up and scowled at her as she swung lazily back and forth, hanging upside down from the trapeze bars by her knees._

_“What you know, Miss Up-In-The-Air?  He is holding the bow in the right hand.”_

_“Nope,” she shook her head, the mass of thick black curls obscuring her face.  “Not the right hand, but his right hand.”_

_Tomas swore a little, scowled at Elise and Clint then relented and handed him a simple longbow._

_“There, target,” he waved his hand in the general direction of the straw bales.  “Hit it if you can.”_

_Clint hit the bull’s eye with his second arrow._

 

 

 

The helicarrier seemed pretty much back to normal when they got up there.  It had been hovering a little to the west of the Statue of Liberty for the last couple of days, but once the quinjet had deposited the somewhat reduced Avengers team on the decks, the carrier rapidly gained altitude and went to sit out off the coast of New Jersey.

Clint tried not to look around as he followed Tasha along corridors which stilled smelled of fresh paint.  The last time he’d left it, it had been a wounded, limping wreck which they’d managed to keep in the air by some combination of Stark power and witchcraft.  He didn’t think about what lay three decks beneath, the old containment room for the Other Guy which was now a storage room, if Fury was to be believed.

Which he wasn’t, as Clint and everyone else well knew.

The room was small, no more than an antechamber to the main laboratory, which was a strange place for them to hold any kind of meeting.  Tony and Steve were talking quietly, Tony for once not going out of his way to irritate or wind anyone up.  Tasha stood next to a porthole with Bruce, who hadn’t been looking forward to coming back up here anymore than Clint had, but here they all were.  Thor was elsewhere, but it seemed he wasn’t necessary for this meeting.

The very real space left by Coulson seemed immeasurably large in that small room.  Clint flung himself into a chair at the furthest point from the door, eyes scanning the place for the nearest escape route.  Two vents set into the ceiling near the external wall were about it.

He was drawn from his perusal of the interior by Fury’s usual dramatic entrance.  Did he ever wear anything else other than those damned leather coats, Clint wondered.  Then that led to the disturbing imagery of Fury getting dressed in the morning and Clint decided not to follow that train of thought.

“Good, you’re all here.”  Fury nodded, and then sighed.  Clint’s insides did a strange little hiccup and he took a good hold of the arms of his chair.  “There’s no easy way to tell you all this, so I’m not going to bother.  You may as well come on in.”  He raised his voice slightly as he looked at the door.  After the slightest of pauses, the door swung open, and in walked Phil Coulson.

 

_He stood at the graveside, staring down at the simple wooden coffin, a few handfuls of damp dirt scattered across its lid.  Behind him, the last of the circus folk were drifting away, heading towards the road where all the vehicles and trailers were lined up, ready to move on to the next town.  A handful of band members meandered slowly across the wet grass, playing ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’._

_“It’s time to leave,” Elise said, laying a warm hand on his chilled arm.  “Come on Clint.”_

_Clint nodded absently, hearing her but not really taking her words in.  What was he going to do without Barney now?  Sure, the circus would keep him on, but he didn’t want to spend his life shooting arrows at a target from the back of a moving horse or at people who’d overstepped some mark or other.  Although with Barney gone, there would be no one to organise those hits, to talk money and location and game plans._

_Later, in the warmth of Elise’s bed, numbed by her gentle touch and a bottle of decent vodka, she gave him an envelope.  In it was a plane ticket, a passport and the contact number of her cousin who ran a circus in Russia._

_“He will find you work,” she told him. “The Parad Chernii is a well-known circus.  It travels everywhere and there are many interesting people.”_

 

“What the hell!?” Tony was the first to speak, leaping out of his chair and stalking around the table.  Fury, to give him credit, didn’t flinch.

Coulson did.

No one missed it. Tony stopped in his tracks, blinking rapidly.

“You want to explain this?” Steve asked into the silence.  Fury glanced at Coulson and shrugged.

“He _was_ actually dead," Fury stated.

“For forty two seconds,” Coulson added, and his voice sounded wrong, slightly deeper, a little breathy, not as sure and confident as he usually was – as he needed him to be, Clint realised.

“So he wasn’t dead when you told us he was.”  Steve was standing now.

“Call it poetic license.”  Fury spread his hands wide, that single eye skipping over each of them in turn.  “You needed a focus.  I gave you a focus.”

“So the imminent destruction of New York City followed by most of America and then the rest of the known world wasn’t focus enough?” Clint asked, standing too.  He couldn’t look at Coulson yet, was afraid to do so and see him as anything less than what he’d been.  His heart was beating a strange tattoo in his chest and he felt as if the walls were shimmering around him.

“You would have gotten there eventually, but someone had to point your stupid asses in the right direction and it needed doing right then.”  Fury nodded.  “So, Agent Coulson is back and he is, as of now, the Avengers SHIELD liaison.”

“What?”  It wasn’t quite a squawk from Tony, but it came close.  “You mean Agent here is going to need living quarters in the Tower?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Mr Stark?”

“Well of course not.”  Tony rolled his eyes.  “I may just have happened to have built a couple of extra apartments into the Avengers floors.  Just in case of, you know, expansion.  Or having to hire more help.  Because we could probably do with more help.  A lot more, if we’re honest.”

Tasha had risen from her seat whilst Tony babbled, but even he fell quiet when she reached Coulson.  It was as if everyone in the room held their breath as she reached out and touched Coulson’s face, an unspoken question in her eyes.

“Perogi,” Coulson said quietly, and Tasha actually smiled at him.  “In Minsk.”

“We were all told it was Loki,” she didn’t quite ask, but Coulson nodded.

“It was.  It seems I am as indestructible as everyone thought.”

“So you’re coming back to the Tower with us?”

Coulson looked around the room and Clint felt the weight of his gaze for a long moment.

“I think I will.”

 

 

_The circus had been a place to hide for many people, not just Clint and Barney.  No one went by their real names and everyone had a history, a past that was ignored and forgotten.  It was an unspoken rule that you didn't ask and were never expected to tell. Sometimes the real world caught up with them, but then the legendary circus brotherhood circled the wagons and excluded the outsiders.  Law enforcement and government officials never got a look in.  And if things got a little too hot, the entire circus could pack up and move on overnight, leaving behind a trampled muddy field and little else._

_The first time Clint woke up in a different field to the one he'd gone to sleep in, he spent the next three days in a blue funk, unable to get his bearings.  The wagon he and Barney slept in was a bunkhouse drawn by an old Ford pickup that slept eight other guys and the fact he'd managed to sleep through it being hooked up and hauled off a bumpy field freaked him out.  He made it a mission to teach himself to be more observant, to learn how to wake up if anyone so much as sneezed._

_He never really slept properly again._

 

 

Maybe it was some residual magic left over from Loki's spear, but Clint found he struggled to be in the same room as Coulson – or Phil, as everyone was supposed to call him now.  God knew why this whole first names thing was a, well, a thing in the Tower.  Tony had insisted on it, even though he had nicknames for everyone.  Phil wasn't Clint and Tasha's handler any more, he was the Avengers handler and Clint didn't like how resentful that made him.  He was so far in denial about his feelings that he decided that it was better if he stayed out of the way until things calmed down.

Except he couldn't.  Clint found himself following Phil around the tower, lurking in ventilation shafts and in quiet corners.  Ostensibly he was studying him for any sign that Loki's magic was still exerting its power, that the man Tony continued to call Agent was who he said he was.  Clint had heard Tasha ask him their question, heard Phil’s reassuring answer and still, nearly a week later, noticed the way Tasha smiled when Phil was in the room.  It made Clint want to smile as well, which was too fucking weird for his liking.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he wanted to be as near to Phil as he could.  Nothing at all.

“You’re up early,” Tony said.  Clint half turned from where he was looking out of the window at the dawn light slowly creeping across the city.  “Or late, depending on your perspective.”

“Late.”  He didn’t have to look at his watch to know it was a little after 5am.  “And your excuse?”

“Out of coffee.”  The state of the art machine that inhabited a corner burped obligingly when Tony prodded it.  “Espresso or one of those frothy things you pretend you don’t like?”

“Cappuccino.  With chocolate on top.”  Clint hesitated, torn between wanting to glare at the dawn a while longer or give in and actually admit to himself that he wanted some kind of company.  Even an uncaffeinated Stark was better than moping on his own.  “I thought you had one of those coffee monsters in the workshop.”

“I do, but it still needs feeding with beans.  Which, I may add, is Dum-E’s job and one that he is sorely neglecting.  I may yet donate him to the Smithsonian.”

“I’m sure Director Fury would be delighted to have Dum-E on the helicarrier,” Phil said from behind them.

“Agent!” Tony crowed with delight.  “Black Americano with half a spoon of sugar?”

Phil looked at Tony for a long moment before turning to raise an eyebrow at Clint.

“Not enough coffee,” Clint told him, ignoring the way something in his chest jumped at the sight of Phil in shirtsleeves and black suit pants, no tie.

“Ah.”  A slight nod, the ghost of a smile.  “In that case, yes please, Mr Stark.”

 

_The first time Clint saw the acrobats perform under the big top, he decided he wanted to be one.  The idea that someone could make their body twist and leap and almost fly like that was almost like magic.  He told Barney he was going to be an acrobat the first week they were at the circus._

_“Kid, these guys have been doing that since they were old enough to walk,” Barney told him.  “You’re eleven, you’re way too old to start.”_

_Clint had sulked for a few days until Barney had given in and actually asked one of the acrobats how they started._

_“He was fifteen,” Barney told Clint that evening.  “And he says if you want to give it a go, he’ll show you a few moves after the show tomorrow night.”_

_The next day, he worked flat out to make sure he was finished in time to watch the performance.  The circus had its own band, one that played between acts.  It was nothing like the big marching band Clint had seen the day they’d joined the circus.  It was much smaller and they didn’t march, but they had shiny brass instruments and well polished black shoes.  Clint always wondered why they didn’t parade around the ring, stepping out in time to the music and each other.  Maybe circus bands weren’t as practised as proper town marching bands, he thought._

 

This circus was smaller.  Clint wandered through the sideshow tents, watching normally-pragmatic New Yorkers get all excited over throwing balls at coconuts and shooting rigged air rifles at tiny targets in the hopes of winning a small stuffed bear.  He didn't feel at home, but also, he wasn't such an outsider here.  New Yorkers were a resilient breed and they seemed out to have a good time in spite of the rebuilding going on all around them.

Clint wasn't out for a good time.  He wanted to vanish, to disappear from the SHIELD radar, although he didn’t have much hope that he actually could.  What he’d not counted on was the fact that, being an Avenger, he would be recognised in public.

“Hey, it’s the Hawk dude!”

Clint blinked in surprise.   The guy who’d spoken was about his own age, with black hair and dusty looking denim jacket and before Clint could make a sharp exit he found himself shaking hands with him.  A small crowd of people formed, all wanting to pat him on the back and offer their thanks and congratulations.  Surprisingly no one seemed eager to berate him for the damage which had been caused.  Small mercies, thought Clint.

He’d never expected any sort of recognition though.  He didn’t fly or have super strength or any real gift apart from being able to shoot pretty well.  He wasn’t a superhero, he was just an ordinary man; fallible and a little broken but these New Yorkers, famous for their can-do, take-no-shit, forthright attitudes were looking at him like he was some sort of star and it humbled him.

Just as he was trying to figure out exactly how to escape the growing throng, including two little girls in matching Merida costumes who were looking at him with awe, there was a sudden brassy fanfare from the main entrance to the big top.  As everyone turned to look, Clint dodged away behind the closest sideshow.   A jump and a twist had him up on top of an old deuce-and-a-half and from there he made his way to the back entrance of the big top.   He didn’t look down, didn’t want to risk seeing any disappointment on the faces of the crowd he’d so neatly given the slip to.

Catching hold of the rope anchoring the crosspiece to the ‘stagedoor’, he flipped down onto the ground and ducked inside the big top.

 

_In the Russian circus, he found people who had a completely different skillset.  He thought he’d learned a lot growing up, but that was nothing compared to what he acquired now.  He was a fair enough acrobat, having learned everything Elise and her three brothers could teach him, but in the Parad Chernii he met a wizened little Mongolian man who would have run rings around all of them._

_Temur sat on the edge of the main ring, watching Clint practise his moves on the back of a walking horse, and muttered constantly._

_“What?”  Clint flipped forward and landed astride the animal, bringing it to a halt in front of the old man.  “Am I bad?”  His Russian wasn’t brilliant but he was learning fast – one disadvantage of leaving school at the age of nine meant that he hadn’t discovered his affinity for languages until arriving in a foreign land._

_“You are not good.”  Temur gestured with his left hand, encompassing horse and rider and area.  “You are like a wooden, clockwork toy.  No grace.”_

_Clint rolled his eyes, then reined in his instinctive reaction to brush off the criticism as an old man’s rambling.  Because what was he here for, if not to learn all he could?_

_“You teach me?” he asked, and Temur grinned._

_It was the other skills he honed which brought him to the attention of a small organisation back home.  One day, he was approached by an unassuming looking guy with a black suit and kind eyes that didn’t miss a fucking trick.  Clint still didn’t know how Coulson talked him out of Russia and into SHIELD, only that there was something about him which promised salvation, and Clint was damned if he was going to pass up on the chance of that._

 

Clint sat in the wings, perched on the top of a tall ladder and watched the performers.  The acrobats tumbled past, oblivious to him as they cart-wheeled and back flipped, warming up for their turn in the main ring.  As they reached the flap of canvas which separated the back of the tent from the public areas, the clowns appeared, smiles dropping, posture changing from bouncy, happy entertainers to the world weary souls they actually were.

The acrobats went out, the clowns vanished into the dressing tent and it went quiet for a brief moment.

“I know you’re there,” Clint said, eyes fixed on a darker patch of shadow in front of him.

“Actually, I’m here.”  Phil stepped out from behind a pile of crates to Clint’s left.  For one startled moment, Clint actually wanted to laugh.  “Come down.”

It wasn’t quite the order Clint was used to, but it was a little more than just a request.  He looked down, and realised that Phil wasn’t wearing a suit.

“Are you actually wearing jeans, sir?” Clint asked, jumping and landing with catlike grace scant inches from Phil.  He didn’t even flinch, Clint noted with some satisfaction.  A few weeks living with the Avengers had given Phil back his cast iron, bomb proof aplomb.

“Jeans, chucks and a Henley.”  Phil shrugged, a rueful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  He was also wearing his glasses, the thick black frames somehow making him look younger.  “This is what happens when you mention in passing that you have no clothes, and Tony Stark is in the room.”

“He did that for me and Tasha too,” Clint said.  He resolutely did not check out the way Phil filled out his soft looking grey-blue top, nor the way the collar was unbuttoned just enough to give a glimpse of Phil’s collar bone and a tiny bit of chest hair.  It almost made it worse, in a way, that Clint knew exactly what Phil’s chest looked like under there, but stripping him out of his shirt to stem the bleeding from a bullet wound hadn’t been the best way of seeing Phil half naked.

“We need you back at the Tower,” Phil said.

Clint’s heart dropped a little at the ‘we’, because Phil wasn’t prone to using the royal pronouns.  ‘We’ meant SHIELD and Clint sighed.

“I thought you all were getting on fine without me.”  He scuffed his foot through a patch of sawdust.  “Nobody missed me.”

“Everyone missed you.”  Phil’s voice was impossibly gentle.  Clint didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see that same kindness reflected in Phil’s eyes because then he would be unmade a second time and he was so fucking afraid this was all in his mind, that it was Loki’s magic that had brought Phil back, making Tony mellow and Tasha smile and Steve crack jokes which definitely didn’t come from the forties.

“No one came looking.”

“If you think that, then you’ve lost your edge.  Natasha has tailed you the last couple of times you’ve been here.”

“So if you knew where I was, why bother coming out to see me?”

“I need you back.”

Phil’s admission hung in the air for a long moment.

“You?  Or SHIELD?”  Clint looked up and Phil smiled at him.

“I do.”  Phil stepped forward.  “You’re part of a team, Barton, and the team needs you.  But I…”  Phil took a deep breath.  “I need you too.  Because it was only when you weren’t there that I realised how much I wanted you there, and everything feels out of step.”

“We don’t ever march in time,” Clint said.

Phil reached out and slid a hand around the back of Clint’s neck.  His palm was warm and Clint shivered.

“I don’t care,” said Phil, drawing Clint closer until their foreheads touched.  This close, Phil’s eyes were an impossible kaleidoscope of green and blue and gold.  “Just come back.”

“Yes sir,” Clint breathed, and tilted his head just enough to bring their lips together.

Phil’s kiss was warm and soft, almost chaste in its gentleness, and Clint let his eyes close as he simply breathed Phil in.  The comforting scent of Pour Monsieur, coffee and a hint of gun oil wrapped around him and he found his hands had slipped up under the soft fabric of the Henley to settle on Phil’s hips.

“Tell me I wasn’t reading this all wrong, specialist,” Phil said quietly, drawing back just enough to take a deep breath.

“I think we’re singing from the same song sheet sir.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: Carry On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/959364) by [sian1359](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359)




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